Hardware/Power Supply question

Hi all, and Thank You for looking at and answering my question. My brother just bought a new hard drive for his computer, an 80 GIG WD, and we were wondering if it would affect his power supply. He only has a 200W power supply. He is using an HP Pavilion 533w, with 256mgs of ram. He has an Intel 810 chipset, with onboard video, which I cannot determine how much ram he needs for his video, since HP won't answer me, so I'm concerned if he has a big enough power supply for that! He's using Windows XP Home w/Service Pack 2. So if anyone could let me know if his power supply is big enough for his needs, or if you think he should get a bigger one. He doesn't have too many add ons, the usual speakers with a woofer, wireless, optical mouse, wired router, and a 17" Flat Panel Monitor, and he doesn't go online and play games or anything like that, just a usual home user. If you do think he should get a bigger one, what brand would be good? I don't know about power supplies, and my brother knows even less! hehehe Thanks again, you guys are great here! wowie

 

yes 200w PSU should be enough for that old computer.

 

The PC will also support another HDD. Good to go.

 

Thank You, Thank You WSFuser and furballi! I really appreciate the quick response, and whew, I know it's an old computer, but it works, and I wanted to make sure it will stays that way! lol You guys Rock! Thanks again Wowie

 

No need to spend more $ if the PC serves your needs. Those old HPs come with a quality PSU! The old HP should be pulling about 110 watts of ACTUAL maximum load (810 OBV). Each additional HDD will draw about 15 watts, max.

For a casual home user, I'd bump the RAM up 512MB if you want to realize a huge boost in performance. Those old units take PC100 RAM. Some PC133 RAM are NOT backward compatible with PC100. Crucial.com would be the best memory source for this rig. The OBV will normally reserve 20MB of physical RAM for the video section. Also look for the Seagate 160GB 7200 rpm HDD often on sale at Fry's/Outpost for $40 to $50 (5 yr warranty).

 

i dont mean to nitpicky but the maximum load is actually closer to 180w and it uses PC2100.

 

Ok...my bad! Thanks for the correction.

This is an updated Walmart 810 OBV with 2GHz Cel. I've seen Kingston 512MB PC3200 RAM CL3 on sale at Circuit City for $30 AR. That's your best buy in memory. Corsair Value Select will also work, but may not be available at CC. The OBV can pull up to 64MB of RAM but actual load during normal use is 20MB.

Add another 30 watts MAX for the Celeron CPU (140 watts max load under Prime95 max heat mode). The nominal load for most users is around 120 watts with idle load just north of 90 watts (stock configuration).